Covering work that is not just experimental but also actively interrogates the potential of the form is a central part of our mission here at Broken Frontier. In Blinded writer Joe S. Farrar and letterer Rob Jones have taken that to heart with a comic that takes an ambitious idea and uses it to propel their narrative forward thematically and visually. Blinded, you see, is a comic without illustration. But not one without sequential art of a very specific kind. Instead it’s the letterer’s craft that takes centre stage and, in that respect, this is an absolute storytelling tour-de-force from Rob Jones.
Blinded #1 introduces us to Sam, a young woman we meet shortly after she is blinded in an accident. Having to face up to the reality that her condition is a permanent one, Sam must learn to adapt to the fact that her relationship to the world around her has shifted forever…
This is a quite remarkable opening chapter as Farrar and Jones construct a story that relies entirely on speech balloons, narration boxes, lettering and sound effects; all splayed across entirely black backgrounds. We are initially introduced to Sam gradually. as she awakens to her newfound situation. Farrar carefully ensures that we experience this pivotal change in Sam’s life on the most intimate levels. Her perception of the world being portrayed as being through her other senses now, all replicated by Jones via some of the most specific tools of comics, while her emotional reaction to events comes through her internal monologue which sometimes starkly contrasts with her external one.
Blinded is a quite frankly outstanding collaborative relationship between creators. In places we can almost feel the individual panels sitting behind the darkness of the page. In other scenes we are thrown headfirst into the confusion and anxiety of Sam’s immediate environment in a breathtaking cacophony of sound and motion. One double-page spread of sorts, when Sam takes out the noise-cancelling earplugs she has been using to reacclimatise herself to the outside world, is particularly stunning in the way it depicts her reactions to an overwhelming aural overload with a surge of relentless chatter and onomatopoeia.
What is so impressive here is the way in which we are urged not just to connect with Sam emotionally but to imagine the physicality of her experience too, from changes in temperature to accidental pain. A key small press release for 2024 and one that essentially acts as an astonishing 20-something page portfolio piece for Rob Jones.
Joe S. Farrar (W), Rob Jones (A) • Spotlight
Review by Andy Oliver
